I am on my holidays. P has a simple philosophy: she does not feel as if she is on holiday unless she is exhausted at the end of each day. However simple the philosophy, I simply cannot understand it. For me it is not a holiday unless at the end of the day I have a cold beer in my hand and somebody (anybody) is gently massaging the soles of my feet.
Since she was a girl, P’s family have been exhausting themselves in the pursuit of relaxation in Torridon; a village in the Western Highlands of Scotlands. The Glen leading to Loch Torridon has a certain grim magnificence, It looks like God ran out of time on a Friday afternoon and left it rough and unfinished. There is little vegetation and what there is is grass hardened against the weather and tough enough to slice through the sole of your shoe.
In this Glen once lived Highlanders. They were funnelled at gunpoint down the Glen and to the edge of the Loch by landowners who had concluded that the land was better used for feeding sheep than Scotsmen on the incontestable basis that the sheep were generally better behaved and had a higher retail value. Some of those dispossessed moved to Canada where, having previously been irascible and warlike because of an ill-founded insecurity that they were inferior to their English neighbours to the South, they became friendly and pacific because an ill-founded security that they were superior to their American neighbours to the South. Those who remained were made ever more surly and resentful by a combination of there being no Ice Hockey to watch and the presence of “the midge”. The singular is misleading. These tiny insects rise in stupefying swarms at dusk and suck either blood from your skin or the tears from your eyeballs (depending on how difficult a day they’ve had). Within a second of the sky beginning to darken you feel your scalp begin to crawl. Unfortunately, I mean that literally rather than merely figuratively. Immediately thereafter nerve endings in every exposed patch of skin start reporting in that all is not well and shortly thereafter you go mad.
Now I know no-one likes a know-it-all but one does feel like taking the Scots aside and saying “Why in Heaven’s name are you living here? Daily blood-suckings from insects too small to see?! You could be in California in under 24 hours. Go pack!” This is entirely to misunderstand the Scots who revel in misery. They are proud of the midge and can barely stifle their glee as another Japanese tourist in Burberry plus fours leaps into the peaty broth of the Loch in search of relief. Donnie, the owner of the tiny shop is a case in point. He is not a cheery Mormon with a dazzling smile and some irritating tuneful brothers. He is, instead, a flinty-eyed man with a history of ill-health that makes it unwise ever to ask him how he is. Somehow, though, through all the gruffness he makes you feel welcome and the fact that it seems hardwon somehow makes it seem all the truer and more valuable. That’s why I said yes to coming here again this year. Deep down I like the Scots. Can’t help it.
My husband lived in Scotland for awhile during his early military career… “The Midge” mustn’t be a thing of the east coast because this is the first I’ve ever heard of such a thing! On the other hand, I’ve heard plenty of flinty-eyed men stories.
Happy holiday to you, Moobs.
Deep down, I like the jocks too. Deep down on a very deep level of my psyche which is so deep I’ve not discovered it yet. Och, just kidding.
I also had the joy of the midge due to holidays with my Scottish grandmother. She had a failsafe scottish trick of flailing about in a certain way that would ward them off. It just angered them. I think that might instead have been Scottish humour. My mum then responded with using the failsafe English wasp method. We took only slow and minute movements for a week. My dad said we should embrace nature and headed off into the woods where he went mad. See which one works for you!
Love the 3rd paragragh. As it happens, despite having some family up there I’ve never been to Scotland.
You’re a brave, brave man, moobs, taking on the mighty midges …
The best thing to do with midges is eat a lot of garlic. They don’t like your blood if you smell of garlic.
Or something. I only get bitten as a last resort when they’ve had enough of eating other people. I must be doing something to make myself taste different.
I was really hoping this entry would end with “However, none of that is our problem, because we’ve had enough of that nonsense and this year we’re sunning ourselves in the Maldives”.
I heard it was a lot of Marmite you were meant to eat. Otherwise, holiday with my husband, who is irresistable to all biting bugs, leaving his companions unscathed. (But then, one husband with 20 midge bites on each leg is worse than 20 billion midges, so you might be better off with Marmite.)
I have vague memories of a childhood holiday where I whined for most of it and my grandmother growing tired of this and telling me that ‘ I hadn’t come on holiday to enjoy myself’ which I think sums up Scotland and the Scots.
Dammit. Where’s the map to go along with this post? You know us Americans need visuals and we forgot our geography longgggg ago. Ok, maybe that’s just me, but still!
Does anyone know of a midge repellant which works in Scotland then? I’m up there in 2 weeks time!
I can appreciate that Moobs…nothing but wusses out here in California anyway. (I say this with the dogs lounging about me on a persian rug, while I sip my Chianti and think that the fountain running outside may need more water and that the eggplant parmesean for lunch was outstanding and being out on the boat will be grand and the beach this morning with the dogs wasn’t so bad either, except the part where one of them rolled on a dead dolphin).
Wow, that’s really something. Nobody experiences dead dolphins here!!
Umm…yeah. What the hell are we suppose to do while you’re away? This is bullshit. Did the Scots drown you in a Loch? If you’re dead,…you. are. in. SO. much. trouble. MOOBS!